Quick Biographies : Corrie Ten Boom
She had what might be considered the most inconspicuous of beginnings. Born to a Dutch watchmaker in Haarlem, Holland, the first 45 years of her life might be called uneventful. She never married, and both she and her elder sister lived with her parents until the War came to their doorstep. Corrie Ten Boom did not set out to be a hero. She never attained the simple dreams that so many women aspire to, namely, marriage and children. But perhaps the children God had in mind for her and her sister, Betsie, were the kind not born of man.
“There are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of his will is our only safety. Oh, Corrie, let us pray that we may always know it!” Those words, spoken to Corrie by Betsie after she narrowly missed being impaled in her sleep by a piece of shrapnel, seemed to guide her steps in the perilous days that followed.
Faithfulness “Underground”
Almost accidentally, it seemed, she and her family opened their home to shelter Jews during the German occupation, simply taking the next step forward in the opportunities presented to them. Faithful acts of obedience: relaying information to save a friend, transporting and supplying rations and false identity papers, a conscious decision to give herself to helping the Jews. God used Corrie’s obedience in amazing ways. She became a part of the “underground,” turning her home into a haven of secret rooms where hunted Jews found refuge from the Nazis.
For a year and a half, Corrie and her family were the hub of a network of courageous Dutchmen fighting against the Third Reich. When she was finally captured, God used Corrie to minister to other prisoners, miraculously preserving her hidden Bible, supplying medicine that never ran out, and, in his providence, infesting her barracks with fleas so she and her sister could lead Bible studies uninterrupted by the German guards who were reluctant to enter the room. She witnessed and experienced unspeakable horrors, never losing sight of God’s love for her, her fellow prisoners, and even her cruel supervisors.
During their imprisonment, God gave Corrie’s sister, Betsie, visions of the work he had prepared for them to do after their release. Although Betsie was transported to freedom through death before the war ended, Corrie survived and went on to transform an estate donated by an aristocrat into a respite home for survivors of the war. The rest of her life was spent traveling around the world sharing what God had taught her through her experiences in the concentration camp, bringing reconciliation and demonstrating forgiveness in unimaginable circumstances. She died in her late eighties after three decades spent in redemptive, fruitful ministry.
Faithfulness Wherever God Sets You Down
There are so many things we can learn from Corrie’s example. I think of Allistair Begg’s observation, “There is no place to serve God except where he sets you down.” And what terrible places Corrie found herself ‘set down’! But instead of growing weary and embittered, her experiences produced an abundant harvest of healing and freedom from hatred. Twenty years after the war, she told her listeners, “This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person he puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for a future only he can see.” Her life, so unremarkable for the first five decades, overflowed in her later years with an abundant wealth of service to her Lord.
How might our attitude about our circumstances be different if we saw every encounter as a training ground for the ministry God is preparing us to do!